Category: Elle Carter Neal

I Own All the Blue will be available as a paperback book from the 13th of June 2018.

This picture book for ages four to seven tells the story of a bowerbird who refuses to share the colour blue. Bowerbird’s greed and sense of entitlement has a domino effect as the other animals race to claim colours for themselves. Mixing the colours could lead to disaster as one animal stands to inherit it all… unless everyone learns to share.

I Own All the Blue is a Modern Fable

As a parent, I’ve noticed with surprise how vehement children are about enforcing certain conventions of our society, such as which colours and styles of clothing are allowed to be worn by boys and which are exclusively for girls.

I Own All the Blue is a tongue-in-cheek challenge to the idea that specific colours are exclusively forspecific groups. It’s a book that promotes sharing, and I hope it will help to generate a little bit of thinking and questioning of some of the strange rules we enforce on each other for no real reason.

Preview the Entire Book

I know how frustrating it is to pick up a children’s book that looks promising only to find that the last page goes against your principles. Or trying to gauge the content from a brief Look Inside on Amazon. So I know and understand that you want to vet the entire book before you invest in it.

I’m in the process of publishing a picture book called I Own All the Blue, for ages three to seven. After reviewing hundreds of portfolios and websites I finally clicked with an illustrator and I’m thrilled to be working with Bess Harding to produce this book.

I Own All the Blue is a modern fable I wrote about two years ago. As a parent, I’ve noticed with surprise how vehement children are about enforcing certain conventions of our society, such as which colours and styles of clothing are allowed to be worn by boys and which are exclusively for girls.

I Own All the Blue is a tongue-in-cheek challenge to the idea that specific colours are exclusively forspecific groups. It’s a book that promotes sharing, and I hope it will help to generate a little bit of thinking and questioning of some of the strange rules we enforce on each other for no real reason.

My newsletter subscribers will have exclusive previews of the book in progress, page by page – and will have a chance to read the whole of the text. I know how frustrating it is to pick up a children’s book that looks promising only to find that the last page goes against your principles. Or trying to gauge the content from a 10% Look Inside on Amazon. So I know and understand that you want to vet the entire book before you invest in it.Sign up now, so you can join in the fun!

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I’m also currently writing a chapter book for ages three to nine, called The Convoluted Key. Stayed tuned 😉

Maddie becomes Earth’s best hope of survival when she uses a magic wand to travel to its quantum-entangled twin planet, Ground. But there are other people after the wand, and they have suspicious intentions and unfair advantages. Can she keep it from falling into the wrong hands as she completes the quest that will save both worlds?

Meanwhile nine-hundred-year-old Lady Sa finds herself in serious trouble when she is captured during her quest for the Source of magic. Worse, she is unable to fulfil her duty as guide to the wand-holder, and her disappearance puts new wand-holder Madison Lane at risk in an unfamilar world.

Just as some people find it hard to start a conversation, some also battle with what to say next. If talking to people doesn’t come naturally to you, you might want to think of conversation ideas ahead of time. Don’t rehearse too much or you’ll sound unnatural.

Many people just don’t know what to say and will respond to any attempt to start a conversation. It’s worth a try.

Here’s a neat trick: Start by asking the question you want the other person to ask you. What’s the most interesting thing you do or know or like. Because, usually, the polite thing to say after answering a question is “How about you?”

Friendship is one of the themes that crops up in my books all the time. I’ve made lots of mistakes with my friendships, and learnt plenty of lessons along the way (the hard way). I thought I’d share some of the good stuff.

I first came across this particular headgear when I was a child listening to a Story Teller tape of The Faery Flag by Beryl Maude-Jones. The accompanying book was full of pictures of pointy cone-hats with long veils. The funny thing was I was scared by the story. So, in true child-like spirit, I decided it would be better if I recorded over this story by singing Happy Birthday onto the tape instead. I earnestly informed my mother that I would re-record the story when I was older and it no longer scared me (as if I could possibly recapture the talent of reader Annette Crosby (she of One Foot in the Grave fame)). Luckily my rendition of Happy Birthday was only long enough to record over the title of the story. And the last time I was able to listen to the cassette tape, as an adult, I laughed at my little five-year-old self singing to unscarify the audio. My husband now informs me that we no longer have any equipment capable of playing those old tapes. Continue reading “The Cone-Shaped Pointed Hats Worn by Princesses in Fairytales…”

I wanted to be an author from the age of about eight or so – as soon as I realised that real people were responsible for the stories I loved. I was a storyteller from a very early age, entertaining friends at sleepovers with tales of princes and princesses, and making up plays that we would rehearse and put on for our parents.

I never could decide on a “real” job, so I did a creative writing diploma and a secretarial course to learn to type, and kept working away on my first novel. Writing and telling stories have always been a part of who I am, so it’s a natural outlet for my creative expression, my ideas, and the way I view the world. Continue reading “Long and Winding Writing Journey”

Beyond the murk
The ire of dragon long impaled on wretched lance
Encircled in a bitter trial.
Sacred heart and evil dance
And hemlock burns in desperate pale
Beyond and through the cries of night
Bewitched and thrice behove of light
Briton’s daughter-earth beyond
Fearless echo of their heart.Continue reading “Orb’s Return (Poetry)”

When I was a young child a little girl called Fiona Harvey was kidnapped from the same town where I lived. Parents of that town – my parents, my friends’ parents – clamped down on our freedom out of concern for our safety and taught us about “stranger danger” – as well they should have. I still walked home from school almost every single day, but things had changed.

My fears grew slowly. I travelled to the UK and felt able to take risks I wouldn’t have dared to in the place where I grew up. I lost more innocence, not because I took those risks, but because others felt entitled to abuse my naivety simply because I had it. I took a lot of supposedly far bigger risks that had no negative consequences for me at all. Travelling by myself overnight on a train to see Dublin, Stratford-upon-Avon, London… some of the highlights of my trip to the UK. I took myself out to dinner in Dublin and then walked maybe a mile by myself, late at night, across the city, to find a particular pub I’d read about, where I then had a drink and a conversation with a lovely Scottish couple and a pleasant young man from Cork. Right place, right time? I certainly hadn’t been as safe at our next-door neighbour’s house, or in my parents’ home with bars on the windows and dead-bolts on the doors. Continue reading “How I Lost My Courage”

A week or so ago I had one of those sparks of inspiration that usually stop me short as I backtrack in amazement to work out how my brain cobbled together something that seems so, well, inspired. I was tidying up (yes, housework), putting some books back on a shelf, when I noticed that the author of one of the books had the same name as a character from my work-in-progress. I thought nothing of it at the time, but about half an hour later I found myself mulling over what I remembered of a Wikipedia entry I’d read a year ago, that had a connection to a plot strand involving this same character. Suddenly the phrase “everything’s connected” popped into my head, and an element of the Wikipedia entry that I hadn’t considered important before wound up being the thread that tied an entire dangling subplot back into the main plot. I was so blown away I just had to sit there for a moment with my mouth open. Continue reading “Sparks of Inspiration”

The long awaited update post. I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in December – another easy homebirth, but another silent reflux baby. She hasn’t yet fully outgrown the reflux, but she started crawling at six months and is now pulling herself up to stand at eight months. Her brother hasn’t coped very well with the addition of a constantly crying baby to his life, and turning three didn’t help, either. We have had to take several steps back and re-group often. But now that the doldrums of winter are finally beginning to shift into spring, we are all feeling a little bit lighter-hearted.